It's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.mostly silly, with a 20% chance of science

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Primate Party Time!

It's been a while since the last Primate Party, but then I saw a photo of a bathing monkey on a colleague's desk* and remembered an anecdote from a couple of years ago.

In between my postdoc and industry job, Mr E Man and I went on a week-long camping trip around the interior of BC. It rained every day (but never all day), so we did less hiking than we'd anticipated, and spent our time relaxing in various hot springs instead.

On one such occasion, Mr E Man came swimming over to me with a lovely happy smile on his face. Looking all wistful and romantic, he began to speak.

"I was just looking at you over here", he said, "all wreathed in steam and gazing out over the misty mountains. And I thought to myself,"

(I braced myself for the compliment of the year),

"She looks like one of those red-faced Japanese monkeys".

After hitting him and laughing together for a while, we were joined by some elderly Dutch tourists. Looking at them, wreathed in steam and gazing out over the misty mountains, I saw exactly what he meant.

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